The Good Boy (35 page)

“Six dollars.”

Pete fishes a ten from his wallet. “Listen, I’m not here to jam you up. I’m a K9 officer, you know what that is?”

“I don’t really care,” the kid says, taking the bill.

“It means my partner is a dog.” Pete puts a hand out to stop him from returning singles. “So hey. I’m just looking for a little attention from somebody who doesn’t slobber. You get me?”

“Sure thing,” the kid says, tucking the change into a different pocket, “though I can’t say you won’t find some dogs in there.” He escorts Pete to the entrance and opens the door. “Have a nice night.”

The kid was right. After Pete pays the twenty-dollar cover, gets a table and orders an eight-dollar orange juice—ten with ice and a tip for the string-bikini-clad waitress—he takes in the show: the stage has two poles, and as dancers take turns working them, Pete has yet to find a girl who looks healthy let alone worth the cost of a hello.

When the current duo run out of things to take off, one drops to her knees to prowl for tips like a slutty cat while the other simply bends over and lets her tits do the asking. Both are a little hard to watch, so Pete checks out the crowd: a table of bachelors share a bottle of Absolut along the lip of the stage. A hetero couple sits to Pete’s right and sips boxed wine from club-provided cups; they seem equally uncomfortable, so it’s hard to tell which one’s fantasy they’re trying out. Behind them, a few guys sit solo in the shadows, and that’s it for customers; pretty thin, Pete thinks, for a Saturday night.

The deejay cues another song—an R&B tune played so loud Pete can feel the bass in his balls—and announces Elexus and Mercedes: “tonight’s luxury rides.”

Mercedes makes herself obvious by wearing the car emblem on her torn T-shirt; she’s going for the hot Hispanic-mechanic look, her legs plenty greased.

Elexus doesn’t have a theme outfit and a white thong and body paint leave little for her to strip. Her purple-black hair hangs long, shiny, and in such perfectly curled cues it must be a wig. Pete doesn’t know how she gets around in her heels; the red heart-shaped platforms stand her a good six inches taller, maybe more.

The heels could be why she isn’t very good. The choreography is basic: she’s got three go-to moves and none includes actual use of the pole, except for balance. When the spotlight comes around, Pete wishes it would keep going, because she squints at the light and her awkward pirouette does nothing but slowly reveal the stretch marks around her hips, the cellulite on her thighs, and the dimples on her ballooned backside. She stumbles before completing the turn.

Still, it’s clear from Elexus’s painted-red smile that she thinks she’s fine, her confidence encouraged by the coke she must’ve snorted before she climbed onstage. Pete knows it’s coke, because no matter how smooth her best move, she can’t get control of her jaw.

When the song is nearly over and the ladies pull up to the front of the stage to cruise for bills, Pete decides to get to it. He ditches his table for the seat nearest Elexus’s back end. When she’s done hustling the bachelors and gets around to Pete, he holds up a twenty and says, “Two minutes of your time.”

Elexus says, “I’ll give you two and a half,” and stretches her G-string so Pete has to put the bill there. He also has to see she isn’t clean-shaven.

“Be right out,” she says, and saunters off.

When she reappears, she hasn’t changed or put anything else on, so Pete’s sure the trip to the dressing room was for another bump.

He’s taken the liberty of ordering her an orange juice, too, though he knows she won’t drink it. She sits down next to him and puts her leg over his and he tries not to think about exactly which part is touching what.

“You want a private room?” she says, eyes shining.

“Yes,” Pete says, “but not here. Friction doesn’t do it for me, you know?”

“You never had my friction, baby.”

“Oh, I want your friction,” he says, though he can’t possibly sound like he means it. “But I want other things too.”

“Well, baby,” she whispers, her hot breath on his cheek, “I guess that depends on how many more of those twenties you got.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve got plenty of green. Plenty of white, too.”

“Do you now,” she says, like she can’t believe her luck.

“What time do you get off?” He turns his head, tries for air.

“Four o’clock.”

“Can you leave early?”

“I can try. Where’m I going?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I hadn’t thought it through. I live in the Loop. You want to come up there?”

“Oh no, baby. That’s too far.” She finds a tube of shimmering red lip gloss tucked god knows where and uses a pinky finger to smear it on her lips. “How about you get a room and I’ll meet you?”

“Where?”

“You wanna take me somewhere nice? I’m talking Motel Six–nice, not the Toledo or the Royal Castle. I’m talking clean sheets and a continental breakfast. I’m talking—”

“Wherever you like,” Pete says, because he wants her to stop talking, and anyway, he doesn’t plan on actually getting a room.

“You gotchyour phone?” she asks.

Shit,
Pete thinks. “Why?”

“I’ma give you my number, and you call me, and then I gotchyour number, and I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, but the thing is, she already has his number, and if she just looked at her call history, she’d find it. He’d be busted.

His phone is in his pants pocket and her leg is right on top of it but she must not notice, or maybe she thinks it’s something else, so he rubs her thigh, trying to move her leg away, and hopes she can’t tell he’s lying when he says, “I left my phone in the Lexus.” It’s the first car that comes to mind.

“No shit? You got a Lexus?”

“I’m hoping for two.”

She smiles, and she seems to really like what he’s doing there on her leg, because she takes his hand and guides it up toward where he really doesn’t want to put it as she leans in and says, “I guess you’re gonna have to wait for me, then.”

He shuts his eyes, swallows hard. “Where should I wait?”

“The Six over on Ashland. Book a room under John Thomas and I’ll be there soon as I can.”

“John Thomas,” he repeats, removing his hand at the same time he feels her tongue in his ear.

“Can I get a twenty before you go?” she thinks she whispers.

He sits back and forks over the dough and finishes all the watered-down juice and is so glad when she has to get back onstage.

*   *   *

It’s midnight when he gets to the motel parking lot. There are a couple other hotels along this strip, so he figures Elexus must have a connection here. That, or she knows they’ve got a lax policy about johns.

God, this is fucked. Joel gone; Sarah and McKenna getting away. And Pete sitting here, helpless. Sarah’s right, he is lost. Worse, he feels locked out.

A memory keeps surfacing, some old summertime, out on the porch one evening, bug spray and cocktails, the radio going. They’d just put the kids to bed; Joel went
splat,
they’d said, because when he got real tired he’d go down with his arms and legs splayed, like someone dropped him into his crib from twenty feet. And McKenna, she didn’t go down after all: three storybooks and another glass of water and she still appeared on the porch, her long hair kid-scraggled, her smile missing most teeth. She heard the music and she wanted to dance. And so she danced. Into the yard she twirled, bare feet in the grass, the light fading. Her nightgown the most beautiful white. She wasn’t worried. She didn’t know worry.

And Sarah there, smiling about McKenna, smiling at Pete—the buzz from her gin and tonic flushing her cheeks. There was no worry.

Pete’s phone buzzes, and for a second he thinks it’s Sarah calling, and he feels like an asshole because he should have called her, to make up for earlier. Pete doesn’t recognize the number, though, so of course he feels like a bigger asshole, because it isn’t Sarah, and he should call her. Tell her the truth.

But first. “Murphy,” he answers.

“Is this Peter Murphy?”

“I just said.”

“I understand your son is missing. I can help you.”

“Who is this?” Pete recognizes the voice and he doesn’t like it but he can’t place it.

“Word about Joel is making the rounds since your wife called 911. Would you care to comment?”

The back of Pete’s throat goes dry. He knows: it’s Oliver Quick. “How did you get this number?”

“My colleague spoke to Sarah.”

“I have no comment.”
You fucking parasite,
is what he wants to say.

“Listen, Peter, it’s too late for this morning’s edition, but we’re going to run the scoop online right now and a banner on Monday. We just need clearance to run a photo of Joel.”

“I have no comment. You have no clearance. I’m hanging up.”

“Peter, a half a million people read our paper and twice that many see the front page.”

“And yesterday they all saw me there, your fucking tabloid.”

“Your son is missing. If just one reader—”

“You don’t care about my son. You want a byline. Don’t call me or my wife again.”

“Are you telling me you won’t let us circulate his picture because of a personal grudge?”

“I’m not telling you a fucking thing.” Pete ends the call and gets out of the car and walks up to the Marathon on the corner. He tries to buy a soft pack of Marlboros and a lighter and the Pakistani working the counter apologizes when his credit card is denied. Pete knows the card has a six-grand limit but whatever, maybe the magnetic strip, so he’s sorry, too. He pays in cash. He leaves the change.

He smokes two cigarettes on his way back to the squad, one after the other. He starts on a third, then stomps it out and does the same to what’s left, grinding the soft pack under his boot.

And before he gets back into the squad he looks up, city lights deadening the night sky. Wherever Joel is, he hopes Butch is, too, because it is the men who are the beasts.

24

Joel finally gets his eyes open just after nine
A.M.
Beyond the trees, a dirty-gray cloud cover sits way, way up in the stratosphere; it looks too thin to spill rain, but if it hangs around, there’ll be no sunshine today.

Joel clears his throat. He’d been in and out of sleep, the thrum and throttle of nearby semis and trains a soundtrack for his own dream-ride on Amtrak, feet dangling from the bench seat while farms and prairies slipped by outside the green-tinted windows, an ever-changing panorama.

During the dream, another passenger boarded and sat beside him; Joel half woke to find Butchie and hugged the dog, burying his nose, taking in the sweet and dusty feather-pillowy smell of his coat. Sometime later, the passenger got up, though the train kept on.

Joel sits up. His fever must’ve broken while he dreamed a downpour, his rain-damp clothes now sweat soaked. His arms feel weak, stomach hollow. He is wiped.

Butchie seems to be in about the same shape; stretched out on his side, he watches Joel from the corner of his eye, but isn’t roused to do much else.

Still, they have to go.

Joel looks out over the grounds. Since he fell asleep, twice as many cars have pulled up in the departing yard, waiting to be linked to a train. A control tower stands over the main lines; last night, Joel assumed its blinking red light sat atop a high-rise much farther off. Now that he knows there’s an eye in the sky, he hopes it hasn’t seen them.

He hikes the pack onto his shoulders and takes it right back off again when every muscle from his neck to his elbows screams torture. He can’t carry it all. He doesn’t have the strength left.

He takes everything out of the pack and weighs his options. He tears the page Molly wrote about Zack Fowler’s party from her notebook and he’s about to tear out the last map from Rand McNally when—

“Hurmm.”
Butchie puts in his two cents. He hasn’t moved; he’s still a one-eyed watchdog. But he might as well be telling Joel no. And he’s right, because Rand McNally isn’t Joel’s to ditch. And Molly’s going to want her notebook back. And anyway, giving up even one thing is still giving up, isn’t it?

“I’m not giving up, Butch.” He shoves everything back into the pack.

“Happy now, Popcorn Feet?” He takes Butchie’s front paws, pulling them to his nose. “Yep, they still smell like you cooked ’em in the Whirley Pop.” Joel knows it’s pseudomonas, a bacteria that makes dogs’ feet smell that way, but: “They’d taste okay, with some butter and salt.” He is so hungry again. At least he feels better.

Butchie dips his head and rolls over, extending all his legs, a full-body stretch.

“There’s no need to fear,” Joel says, quoting an old cartoon his dad gave him last year for his birthday, “Butch O’Hare is here!”

Butchie gets up and does the old jaw stretch; Joel follows lead, yawning as he lifts one arm over his head and pulls on his neck, a warm-up exercise he learned at softball practice. After counting to ten, he switches to the other side, counts ten more, and stands up. He’s swinging his spaghetti arms back and forth for a final ten when he sees Butchie watching and he can’t help it: he grabs the dog by the ears and kisses the top of his head and closes his eyes against his soft fur and loves him so much, so says, “I love you, puppy.”

Butchie sighs.

When a train horn bleats, Joel says, “All aboard, Butch!” and together they double back along the trees, sneaking out the way they came in.

Back on the street, they follow the rise out to Western Avenue. It’s a busy road, but the only other way around the rail yard is all the way around—three sides instead of one—which can’t be any less risky. This is the way to go. Like second base to third. No hesitation.

He pulls on his hood and tethers the leash and they hustle all the way to the light at 18th Street: safe.

Once there, they return to Oakley to take the final blocks south. It might seem silly not to cut over, since the courthouse is to the west, but Joel gets anxious just thinking about crossing Western Avenue; from what his dad says, he imagines it’s going to be like entering another country.

Another country is exactly what it feels like, though, when they reach Oakley. White-wired holiday lights strung along A-frame roofs must be left over from last year’s Christmas. The houses don’t appear lived in so much as stayed at, the vinyl siding cracked, the junk piled up. Trash-swollen garbage cans choke the alleyways, and the whole area smells like a porta potty—that acrid combination of waste and sanitation chemicals.